The future of state liquor stores was on Gov. Lynch's menu at a
breakfast meeting yesterday of the Portsmouth Chamber.
One point that Gov. John Lynch made yesterday morning to the Portsmouth Chamber of Commerce is that there are too many contracted service providers.
Lynch said there are 4,000 individuals and organizations contracted by the state Health and Human Services Department, taking up half the cost of the department's budget.
He cited "tremendous administrative costs" associated with the contractors as a reason why he's asked the department to "reverse engineer" how it does business, focusing less on the contractors and more on the needs of recipients of the services then work backwards on how best to deliver them.
He said there should be fewer than 4,000 -- perhaps 1,500 -- contracted service providers.
And he knows by pushing for tighter control of the contracted services that he'll be accused by service providers that he doesn't care about the people who receive the care. But he said the re-engineering would provide improved care.
"We need to do this because we do care about them, not because we don't care about them," he said.
He proposed that a consolidation of non-profit organizations would help streamline the care, which, during the question and answer period after his remarks prompted Sue
Suter, executive director of the United Way of the Greater Seacoast, to suggest that the creation of non-profits should be made more difficult. But it was an idea Lynch didn't take to.
The governor's remarks to the chamber breakfast at the Wentworth-by-the-Sea hotel in Newcastle focused on the state's efforts to withstand the Great Recession and close a $550 billion funding gap in the biennial budget.
His discussion of Health and Human Services contractors was just one of several budget-related subjects ... examined here yesterday.
Not long after the governor's Portsmouth visit, the House passed an $11.5 billion, two year budget on a 193-174 vote. The House budget is built partly on $113 million in new taxes.
Another item on the governor's breakfast menu was the reorganization of the state Liquor Commission to give it more authority, which the state Senate took up yesterday but decided to take some time to study.
Lynch said he wants to give the commission the ability to capture about $900 million a consultant said the the state isn't getting from liquor sales because of the commission's inability to act independently of the legislature.
He would like the commission to be able to run the liquor stores run them more like a business, closing under-performing locations and upgrading certain key stores, especially the stores that serve as welcome centers.
"Many of our welcome centers are not particularly welcoming," said Lynch. One feature visitors request that the centers don't have? An ATM.
The Senate voted yesterday to delay consideration of the liquor commission reorganization and study the proposal over the summer.
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